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An Article about Educational uses of social bookmarking tools (R. Razavi)
An Article about Educational uses of social bookmarking tools (19/01/1392) R.Razavi Introduction'' '':What is Social Bookmarking? There are many potential uses for social bookmarking in education. However, you may be asking yourself just what it is. Social bookmarking is a way to save, store, group, and share Internet bookmarks online. It allows you to have access to your favorite bookmarks on any computer with Internet access, so even if you are away from home, or work, you can still find and use the sites you value most. Social bookmarking sites also give you the option of joining a group of like minded people, following, or being followed by, individuals who collect similar types of bookmarks to your own. Examples of such sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, and the focus of this article, Diigo. POTENTIAL USES FOR SOCIAL BOOKMARKING IN EDUCATIOn Students and educators can benefit from the use of social bookmarking. Teachers could create a bookmark category for an individual class. Rather than passing out paper with links, students would be referred to the bookmarks residing on the bookmarking site for easy access by clicking links. Taking this concept yet further, a teacher could allow students to submit bookmarks for sites that they find useful and pertinent to the class.Collaborative groups could share an account, or create a unique tag so that all members could have access to what the others have bookmarked.Individuals conducting research could simply use social bookmarking to keep track of useful sites. This will allow the individual to access his bookmarks regardless of location or what computer he is using.Teachers may require bookmarks as part of a student’s participation in class. One simple way of doing this would require students to submit a certain number of sites. While this is a reasonable requirement, a good evaluation would consider the quality of the bookmark and the resource it references.The bookmark could be rated in part by the quality of the description according to clear criteria (which can be explicitely stated in the software with Pligg). These might include: ·Evaluation of site’s authority· Good summary of the site’s content·Valid and rich use of tags·Appropriate categorization· Ratings and comments from peers Use Diigo in Education Diigo lets you do more than just bookmark web pages online. For instance, if you install the Diigo toolbar, or toolbar button, you have the ability to highlight text and pictures in a variety of colors, or add sticky notes to a bookmarked page. With this feature you can annotate web pages with thoughts, ideas or additional information. All these notes are saved for the next time you access the saved bookmark, and anyone else you share the bookmark with, (students or teachers), will also see your annotations. It is a great way to focus attention on a large article.Diigo lets you take screenshots of bookmarked pages to visually remind yourself of the page content, and archive the page so that if the content changes, or is removed, you will always have the original page that you bookmarked. Saved sites can be tagged for easy searching, organized into lists, or presented as a slideshow. Your Diigo bookmarks can be public, or private, and there are numerous options for sharing with individuals, groups or social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook. A recent iPhone App will even allow you and your students to access stored bookmarks on an iPod Touch in the classroom. With the iPhone app you can download bookmarks for offline browsing. So, you really can achieve a lot by using social bookmarking in education. How Can I Use Diigo With My Class? Diigo's commitment to helping teachers use social bookmarking in education is evident with their educator accounts. If you join Diigo, and apply for a free educator upgrade, you become eligible for some additional features created just for teachers. You can bulk create student accounts, with or without the use of student email addresses. Teachers are often concerned about the safety of their students online, and rightly so. With Diigo Educator accounts, the privacy settings, by default, limit communication to that of classmates and teachers only. Lastly, students in the same class are automatically set up as a group, so all saved bookmarks can instantly be shared with peers.The real bonus of using social bookmarking with your class is the ease that you can work on project based learning tasks. Teachers can share annotated bookmarks with a class to research a given topic. Students can perform their own research, and share a useful website with the class. Bookmarks can be accessed just as easily at home, as at school, and online discussions can be had over the merit of a suggested site, or its usefulness to the class project. Can be organized within group to cover several different projects, and the chance to archive for next year's class is a great time saver for teachers. Conclusion Social bookmarking in education is a new and exciting opportunity for teachers and students to connect and collaborate online. While self hosted solutions lack the potential for world-wide collaboration that the big commercial sites have, they certainly allow for collaboration with a group, class, or school. The open source options will protect privacy and avoid inappropriate content, and they are more likely to pass muster with afdministration and community.Of these tools, Pligg stands out as the best because of it’s rich feature set devoted to social bookmarking. Elgg, on the other hand has privacy settings and sharing functions that Pligg lacks and comes as part of a broader social networking platform. Both are suitable for use in the K12 setting. Posh, while useful, is rather limited; thus, a convenience, yet a less valuable social bookmarking tool. www.brighthubeducation.com written by:Bright Hub Education writer